There is nothing more important than your health. That much becomes extremely true when you realize that everything in your life relies on you being Healthy enough to do everything you need to do. But things change drastically if you realize that you’re suffering from a chronic condition. Chronic conditions can make it pretty hard and even impossible to be able to maintain a proper work schedule and do even the most mundane things of day-to-day life. Thanks to modern medicine there are many ways to combat chronic illnesses and symptoms, but the reality is that unless you fully change your lifestyle you will have to deal with a lot of issues that come from it. One of the best ways to manage your chronic conditions is to eat appropriately and have nutrition that benefits you.
Before we can even delve into the importance of nutrition when it comes to dealing with chronic conditions it’s important to understand what we mean by chronic conditions. When we mentioned things like chronic conditions most people might think of some of the worst ones out there like irritable bowel syndrome or chronic back pains. These two things are well known for being both very hard to treat as well as a lifetime condition. But the reality is that when we talk about chronic conditions, we also mean things like diabetes and obesity. Some other illnesses that you might not know are part of chronic conditions are cancers as they tend to resurface from time to time and some neurological diseases like Ms. All these conditions are things that make living life a bit more difficult and often are incurable but not untreatable. Whether it is chronic pain or chronic discomfort caused by a long-term illness there are things out there to help you lessen the symptoms.
So now that you better understand what part of chronic conditions is you can already see why nutrition is so important. No matter what kind of chronic condition you’re suffering from getting in contact with a medical nutritionist is the first step you should take. They can also help with things like sugar-light diabetes diets or nutritional plans that will allow you to maintain a proper vitamin intake even if you don’t eat a lot because of a cancer for example. If you don’t know anything about nutrition talking with a professional is the best way to make an action plan to change your eating habits as well as your lifestyle. It’s important to see diets as a tool and not a punishment like many always see them because of the public perception of what dieting is.
There are also often disease-specific sites that focus on nutritional and diet advice. Take Refluxgate, for example, which is a well-established site with a long history of helping people with diet advice on Silent Reflux.
Nutrition is extremely important to your body for a very simple reason. You have to look at your body like a machine composed of multiple little parts and motors. Similarly to a car, your body requires different things to maintain different systems. For example, you need collagen to maintain flexibility in your articulations and you need protein to be able to feed your muscles if you work on them. In the same way that the car needs fuel and oil change your body needs vitamins and proteins to be able to function at the highest level possible. The healthier your nutrition is for that ulterior body, the easier it will be for it to fight off some of the worst symptoms of chronic illnesses. There is also the reality that many chronic conditions cause vitamin deficiency and other things similar that can be addressed by the consumption of different foods that provide you with a surplus of the things you lack this is by far the easiest and healthiest way of addressing these issues.
It remains extremely important to understand that nutrition is not everything when dealing with chronic conditions. Many chronic conditions require steady monitoring by a medical professional to make sure that things don’t worsen over time. When it comes to making a nutritional plan, you should of course talk with a nutritionist but you should also talk with your doctor about the potential changes you’re planning to make to your diet and your lifestyle. Giving both of these opinions when it comes to changing the way you live drastically is very important since some of these things might affect others. Making a nutritional plan in concert with your doctor is the best way to make sure that your diet affects your current health state positively. At the end of the day managing your nutrition becomes as easy as managing your chronic condition as both become the same. In the same way, if you want to lose weight managing your diet will often show positive changes pretty rapidly compared to other solutions.
I’m Dr Justin Boey, an Aesthetic Doctor in Singapore. I believe in open sharing of knowledge and skills to patients, blog readers and fellow doctors alike.
